Uniform and precise time is required and applied in fields such as mobile communications, electricity, finance and sensing. The way of terrestrial transmission time synchronization is to transfer time information to each terminal device through the time synchronization protocol of terrestrial transmission network. In the Ethernet, to achieve precise timing, corresponding clock synchronization needs to be achieved.
At present, clock synchronization is achieved through the transfer of a message of precise time synchronization protocol, that is, achieving synchronization of clocks across the whole network through the synchronization with the same reference clock in the network. In the network, the time synchronization message for keeping time synchronization can be transferred by means of multicast. A master clock sends a time synchronization message to all connected downstream devices in the form of multicast, and a slave clock receives the time synchronization message. The slave clock responds to the received time synchronization message, generates a time synchronization response message and sends the time synchronization response message to the master clock. Under the situation, the same time synchronization message transmission rate must be set for each clock in a network. If the time synchronization message transmission rate is inconsistent, normal synchronization can not be ensured, thus making the reliability of the entire network low.
In the present situation, the clocks of each device in the entire network must be configured uniformly to achieve the interworking and time synchronization performance of the entire network. Therefore, for the entire network, when a device joins or exits, all clocks of each device in the entire network need re-configuration, leading to poor versatility. Furthermore, if a configuration error occurs to one of the devices, a device alarm will be caused, making the reliability of the entire network low.